| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
First love, you might say, heart sinking in chest: what more can possibly be said about such a subject? Actually, a great deal. To read Cherry is to realise how rare it is to find a teenage girl portrayed on her own terms. As a chronicle of female adolescence with all its longings, fantasies, cruelties and fears, Karr's memoir goes darker and deeper than any book in which the protagonist doesn't end up dead. She turns a savage eye on her own hypocrisies and failings and we like her all the more for them. We even end up fond of Leechfield, easily the toughest, smelliest, nastiest little place ever to appear between the covers of a book--"a town too ugly not to love," her father called it in The Liar's Club. Growing up in such a place is necessarily about getting the hell out but it's also about inventing a new identity with which to make your escape. That's the blessing Karr's wise friend Meredith bestows after a particularly harrowing (and harrowingly funny) acid trip: "I see big adventures for Mary. Big adventures, long roads, great oceans: same self." Cherry is the story of how Karr begins to acquire that self, however fumblingly--a big adventure for Mary, as it is for all of us, and one we never finish as long as we live. Perhaps that's the book's greatest pleasure of all: it hints there's more to come. --Mary Park --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
The superb writing would be enough to attract any reader, even though it features a frankness and roughness of tone that I normally condemn. In this case, the language is warranted in portraying the emotional reality of Professor Karr's life. It gives you access to her mostly uncensored thinking in a way that captures the moment for all time. For example, in describing her forthcoming trip to California she says, "[Y]ou are still immortal, and that coast . . . is beckoning you with invisible fingers of hashish smoke."
Ms. Karr managed to be an outsider in more ways that most can imagine. She was an intelligent female in a town that did not favor intelligence. Her family was about as unconventional as you can imagine (Her mother had a secret history of quick marriages and divorces -- 7 marriages in all, including two to Ms. Karr's daddy; her daddy drank and kept a married mistress who was later shot and killed by her husband.). She was an unattractive tomboy who had a strong sexual drive from a young age. She frequently misbehaved in ways that caused people to become very uncomfortable (such as abusing people verbally in explicitly profane ways, riding topless on her bicycle when she was 11, and going noticeably braless in high school).
As a result, she had a hard time making and keeping friends.
Her mother and daddy had a habit of just disappearing at night to show up days later with various lame excuses. She and her sister would steal her daddy's truck at 13 and drive around looking for one or both of their parents.
As a result, she worried a lot, had trouble sleeping and found herself easily moved to grief.
Not surprisingly, she was soon experimenting with almost every sort of drug and way of partying that you can imagine . . . looking to dull or avoid the pain. These experiences and their consequences are described in compelling detail in the book.
Not too many people cut her any slack, and she was always surprised when someone tried to help her.
Between the vividness of her experiences and the beauty of the writing, this book is likely to become a classic among young people, especially young women, and those who want to understand them better.
After reading the book, I gave my teenage daughter a big hug and thanked our lucky stars that she is having an easier time than Professor Karr did.
After you finish this book, consider how you can create more stability and kindness for someone in your family who really needs them.
Be there.
The prologue is rather misleading; I expected to read a 'road' memoir afterwards as she leaves home before chapter one, but it's all about her childhood and adolescence, which is okay, but not what I expected.The events described vary in interest, and it is a patchy read, but there's usually enough to keep you turning the pages.
The style, however, and the way much of the book is addressed to the reader when describing the author's life, is a most irritating affectation. (Or maybe it's how the author distances herself from her actions.) The way in which the prose turns flowery is perhaps intended to display poetic sensibilities, but just irritates too.
I think it's possible to enjoy this book without being judgemental about the author's life, but I wouldn't have hopes of a classic
Aside from the actual style of writing which you may be able to get used to, the book isn't much good itself. It seems to have very good reviews from literary critics, but most of us aren't critics and read a book because we want to enjoy it. The story (that that there is) jumps around from event to event, and most of it details the author standing around smoking pot. (Why did the police not catch them, why?!) A couple of enjoyable, readable, parts of the book come from her arrest and night in jail and a couple of the high school events, but mainly, this book has no real substance to it, it isn't funny, it's not a good read.
Try it if you like, you may enjoy it. I didn't.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
